Peter Gidal’s cinema is anti-narrative, against representation, and fiercely materialist.

Founded in 1966, the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative started life at Better Books, a counter-culture bookshop on Charing Cross Road, where a group led by poet Bob Cobbing and filmmakers Stephen Dwoskin and Jeff Keen met to screen films. Initially inspired by the activities of the New American Cinema Group in New York, the London Co-op grew into a pioneering organisation that incorporated a film workshop, cinema space and distribution office. During its four-decade history, the Co-op played a crucial role in establishing film as an art form in the UK and participated in a vibrant international film scene. This BFI Player collection brings together new scans of films distributed by and/or produced at the London Co-op.Read More »

Synopsis:
Laura Rossellini, a widow from Rome, vacations on the Algarve coast one hot summer. One day while sunbathing, she finds a wounded man named Robert drifting in the surf on a rubber raft. She takes him home, and, after he is revived, learns his story. As they talk, their mutual attraction grows, until a group of armed men suddenly arrives looking for Robert.Read More »

from allmovie:
One man’s small empire threatens to collapse under the weight of his greed and deceit in this drama that transplants the story of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge to 19th century America. In 1867, Dillon (Peter Mullan) is an Irish immigrant who settled in California during the Gold Rush of ’49 and has done quite well for himself. Dillon owns nearly every business of consequence in the town of Kingdom Come; if someone wants to dig for gold, rent a room, open a bank account, or even order a drink, they have to go to Dillon to do it. One of the few profitable enterprises in town that he doesn’t own is the brothel, which is operated by Lucia (Milla Jovovich), Dillon’s lover. Read More »

A nightclub singer loses her husband in an automobile accident, and soon afterward witnesses the murders of two narcotics agents, and suffers a nervous breakdown. The police come to believe that all three murders are related, as they had suspected her husband was involved in a heroin smuggling ring, and now they think she may have been involved in it – especially after they find a large stash of heroin hidden in her apartment. Read More »

Cable Hogue is a prospector who is abandoned in the desert, with no water, by his so-called partners. Nearing death, he discovers a natural spring and he’s soon at the nearest town to register a land claim. There he meets a pretty local prostitute, Hildy. Back at his claim site, he christens it Cable Springs and opens a stagecoach station where the horses can be watered and the passengers fed. Hildy soon joins him but only temporarily as she has dreams of moving to San Francisco and setting herself up there in her own popular line of business. Things are going well for Cable when, to his delight, his former partners show up. This time he’s prepared for them. When Hildy returns after a long absence he’s ready to pack it in and make his life with her but as is so often the case, fate intervenes.Read More »

VillageVoice Review :
So far as mental fireworks go, the Fourth of July weekend is unlikely to offer anything more spectacular than Peter Watkins’s masterpiece La Commune (Paris, 1871).Dynamic historical reconstruction in the form of an experimental documentary, Watkins’s six-hour feature was made in DV for (and largely buried by) French TV; it’s as much immersion as narrative – complicated yet lucid and contagiously exciting.Read More »

Jason Robards and Olivia DeHavilland star in this 1966 TV play written and directed by Sam Peckinpah.Read More »

Lokis is a dark Gothic romance, a faithful (though expanded) adaptation of Prosper Merimee’s famous story, and the creme de la creme of the small horror niche dealing with the Eastern variant of the werewolf – the “werebear”.

Reverend Wittenbach, clergyman and bibliophile, travels into the eastern regions of Polish-Lithuanian forests – the “kresy” – in order to explore the vast library owned by a rich family of noblemen. Hosted in their luxurious mansion, the reverend learns the strange secrets of the surroundings and discovers the dark and disturbing secret of the family – there are whispers that his host, the enigmatic young count Michal Szemiot, may be something other than a man… that he was born of an unholy union of a woman and a bear…Read More »

Quote:
Set in 1936 in Poland. Zygfryd, a handsome, orphaned young circus acrobat with an introspective temperament, is under the protection of circus owner, Waldo, and his wife. A rich intellectual recluse, patron of the arts (and of young artists) stumbles into Zygfryd’s heart- stopping act and offers him his friendship. He also opens up his cultural horizons and teaches him to consciously reflect on life. It all ends in tragedy, when the boy finds that the circus life is no longer enough and falls during his act. Written by Polish Cinema DatabaseRead More »